1. It takes little more than a quick skim of Title 5 US Code, and EEOC regulations to figure out why. Add to that a low salary, and especially for the TSA a high stress work environment, and you have a recipe for failure.

   There are a lot of top notch Federal employees, but the 80-90% that are simply drawing a salary for doing the minimum amount of work overshadow them.

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   1. Perhaps. I tend to be more skeptical. I’d like to apply the idea Smith & Zelman floated in “Hope” — require each Federal employee to explain, in writing, the Constitutional justification for the existence of his job.

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   2. @CMBTTek: TSA is a high stress job? I’m not seeing that.

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2. I’ve told the story here before of a TSA Agent pulling an AR out of the case I had it in, pointing back down the hallway full of people waiting to go through the screening and pulling the trigger. After a very loud SNAP of hammer on firing pin on empty chamber they asked me “Sir is this unloaded, you can’t fly with a loaded firearm,” because it had an empty magazine in the mag well.

   I’m sure there are lovely people working there but they must keep em hidden in back somewhere.

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3. I was a drug and alcohol tester long ago, and we got contracted to do the annual random testing for TSA in my city.
   Since then, I’ve always described the TSA as “The most unemployable people you’ve ever met” every single time it comes up

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4. TSA employees routinely FAIL to detect simulated weapons and bombs being smuggled through their screening. How Routinely?
   10%?
   25%?
   Half?
   No, not even that minimally acceptable .
   80-90+% of the time the TSA does not detect the bomb or gun.
   Not at one airport.
   Not at two airports.
   Not at a half a dozen airports.
   NO, they fail their primary job 90% of the time at every airport, every time and have failed every time for almost 20 FREAKING YEARS!!!!!

   How many of you have heard stories of people getting through security and their flight with handguns in their luggage?

   The TSA Failure rate is TOP SECRET. But occasionally the truth leaks out. Bureaucrats do not like being publicly embarassed, and the entire TSA performance is completely embarassing. Not just the failure to find test items, their sexual harassment, discrimination, and their abuse of the Public by groping, hidden photographs and videos, even retaliation for daring to ask questions of the TSA.

   Compare that to the privately employed screening at other critical private facilities like nuclear power plants. That screening seems to be successful. What’s the difference? Maybe because they are private. Maybe because if they fail, the NRC will make their bosses and they themselves so miserable that failing is not an option?

   Abolish the TSA. Privatize Screening. If the airport cannot get it right? Restrict their flights, and if they keep failing? Shut the airport down. Trust me, the Airport management will fix the problems before it gets to that.

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   1. A few days ago the Boston TV station did a retrospective on an investigative report they had done in the summer of 2001, describing the poor security at Logan airport. Reportedly the failure rate in tests they ran of the security screening — then run by airlines — was over 90 percent. The local FAA guy sent this upstairs, and it also was sent to various other power players, including then-Senator John Kerry. Nothing was done. The point was made that arguably this enabled 9/11. (I would disagree; what enabled it was the disarming of the victims. It is now well established — and was first established by Flight 77 — that resisting would-be hijackers is effective, even unarmed resistance.)

      What the report did not discuss is that the TSA has vastly increased the cost and inconvenience of screening but has not improved its reliability. I wonder what would happen to the reporters if they were to repeat the unannounced tests they ran back in 2001. Long jail sentences, most likely.

      The fact that the numbers were public in 2001 but are secret now tells you everything you need to know about the motives and honesty of the people in control.

   2. I’d go beyond that. Let the airlines do their own screening. You think Delta has a vested interest in not having one of their planes blown up? I think they do . . . And their screening procedures do not have 4th and 5th amendment concerns.

      And as a consumer, you can then consider the level of security in your travel plans? Think ShadyFly Airlines is “OK, I guess” with their simple “you look fine!” security screening and want to take the risk to save a few bucks? Go for it. Want to be anally probed every time just to make SURE there’s no bombs aboard? Then PlugMe Airlines is for you.

      See? The market always does better.

      And no, I’m not being sarcastic. Abolish TSA. Hell, abolish the entire Department of “Homeland Security;” we’re certainly no safer with it. It was mostly a “We’ve go to DO SOMETHING” moment, and creating another alphabet agency to throw money at counts as doing something. We responded to 9/11’s failure of bureaucracy and lack of thinking just a little(!) outside the box by – yup – creating another bureaucracy. Great.

      While we’re at it, I have more than a few other government agencies we can certainly do without.

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      1. The problem with Airlines doing security is the physical layout of the airports. Airlines are intermixed on many concourses. You do not want your security screenings done at 50 different locations, and you do not want security screenings performed at a short sprint distance to the actual aircraft. Otherwise determined terrorists will just attack en masse through the screening to get to their targets.

         1. Why is that a problem? A consortium of airlines can do the job just as well as one airline, and with the same level of self-correcting self interest.

            And again, the real answer is to obey the 2nd Amendment in air travel.

5. I have a good friend that used to be TSA. He was flown to HQ in DC and given a major award…for turning in thieving coworkers. That’s how low the standards are.

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6. One time, I flew out of Little Airport in Flyover state. I had a *LOT* of reading material, and therefore was selected for more detailed screening.

   I had on a CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program) ballcap, and, as it developed, the TSA guy was LMI.

   So, he’s detail-inspecting my bookbag/backpack, and comments on my cap. I reply (“Naw, I’m a marksman-wannabee”), and we chat about CMP, Flyover State’s CPL policies, carry choices, etcetera.

   He found a neck knife I had overlooked. He asked’do you want to put this in your checked luggage?”

   I was getting close to my personal OCD show-up-at-the-gate deadline, and said, “No, thanks. How about I simply donate it to the TSA?”

   He shrugged, repacked my American Rifleman and Recoil magazines back in my bag, and bade me have a nice flight.

   So, my encounters with TSA have been drama (and idiocy) free.

   Maybe it’s one of those “luck of the draw” deals, along with “the 90% who are dolts, make the other 10% look bad”, as well?

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